Trust and transparency

Posted on by March 4, 2014

I’ve just been reading Brad Burton’s GOYA blog and totally agree with his comment that business is all about trust and transparency. It’s one of the many things we love about Open Source and something that’s very important to us in delivering our services.

On our home page we have an explanation of where our clients’ fees go. Our clients aren’t buying software or buying licenses, they’re paying for space on our servers and the care we need to take of those servers, the time we spend researching and testing software, and most importantly the time we take looking after our customers. It’s very important to us that our clients trust us to look after them properly and are happy that we aren’t charging silly money – after all, the software we use and provide is free, so we have to make sure our clients are willing to pay for our time and expertise.

Trust and transparency, two of the most important words to our way of doing business.

Sweeeeties!

Posted on by March 4, 2014

This is torture – I’m sitting next to a big box of Smarties, all ready for mailing out to the first 50 companies who ask us for a free consultation. We’ve just launched our Pick’n’Mix system, where companies choose any combination of the services we offer, and we thought it would be a laugh to throw in free sweets. Assuming there are any left if this box is going to stay sitting next to my desk!

Toe in the networking water

Posted on by March 4, 2014

We want to get out to meet local businesses, as we live and work in an area rich in SMEs, so yesterday we broke our networking duck and went to a 4Networking business breakfast in Hereford. Well, *I* went to it – we couldn’t both be spared from the grindstone.

I wasn’t sure what to expect – would it be horribly formal, badly-attended and/or a waste of time, or something we would soon find we couldn’t live without? The reality was, as so often, somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately it wasn’t well-attended as the Easter holidays had wrought havoc, but the people who were there were friendly, go-ahead and gentle on the newcomers, and I can see how OpenSure can both benefit itself and help other 4Ners. As well as events, 4N has a busy forum, which I can see becoming a frequent stop on the web.